“Everyone’s too good-looking”: Nicholas Hoult recalls the insult he got from the US Skins remake

Nicholas Hoult has been in some properly big films and TV over the years, but he’ll always have a bit of “Tony Stonem from Skins” about him if you grew up in Britain in the late 2000s. Now he’s opened up about a weirdly backhanded bit of feedback he once got from the American version’s casting team – and it still clearly sticks in the mind.

“We’re having a struggle casting your role because everyone’s too good-looking.”

That was what someone involved in the US Skins remake actually said to Hoult, according to his appearance in a recent Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast episode. He admitted he wasn’t quite sure how to take it, but, in his words, “I think it could insult.” Not exactly a glowing tribute to his looks, is it? There’s a kind of reverse compliment tucked in, if you want to be generous, but mostly it just sounds like the worst sort of casting-room waffle. And in retrospect, it’s also a line that sums up what went very wrong with American Skins in the first place.

The original Skins launchpad

It’s easy to forget just how much of a career machine Skins became for young British actors. The show kicked off in 2007 on Channel 4, running for six seasons and continuously refreshing its cast to focus on new teenage misfits. Hoult was already semi-famous for About a Boy (he was the kid alongside Hugh Grant, if you’re doing pub trivia), but as Tony, he shot to a different level – before diving into all sorts of massive projects: Beast in X-Men, Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road, and Lex Luthor in Superman, not to mention films like The Menu and TV favourite The Great.

• Dev Patel (Anwar) — stormed Hollywood in Slumdog Millionaire, later Oscar-nominated for Lion, and now directing himself in Monkey Man
• Daniel Kaluuya (Posh Kenneth) — went on to Get Out, Black Panther, Nope and an Oscar win for Judas and the Black Messiah
• Kaya Scodelario (Effy) — led the later Skins casts, later starring in the Maze Runner films and a Pirates of the Caribbean
• Jack O’Connell (Cook) — moved on to leads in Unbroken, ’71, and Sinners
• Joe Dempsie and Hannah Murray — better known to some now as Gendry and Gilly in Game of Thrones

The sheer number of famous faces that Skins launched is borderline ridiculous in hindsight.

The awkward American remake

All of which makes the US version of Skins even more of a curiosity. MTV tried its hand at a remake in 2011, but it barely got off the ground; the tone was sanitised, the writing lost pretty much all of its edge, and, crucially, the cast just didn’t gel in the way the UK version did. It was cancelled after a single season.

MTV’s US Skins remake lasted only one season before being dropped in 2011.

No wonder, really – if you’re starting out trying to cast a too-perfectly attractive Tony Stonem, you’ve probably already missed the point.